you can outsource your thinking but you cannot outsource your understanding

AI only sees the past, not the future. AI only sees the pattern, not the purpose. AI only sees the data trail, not the human story. AI only sees compliance, not commitment. AI only sees keyword matches, not understanding. AI only sees what you wrote, not what you thought. AI only sees message response times, not friendship. AI only sees your calendar events, not what they mean to you. AI only sees what was implemented, not what was considered. AI only sees the final decision, not bolts of inspiration. AI only sees what worked before, not what will work next. AI only sees your digital shadow, not the real you.

Христос Воскрес! Χριστός ἀνέστη! Christ is risen!

# on shortification of "learning" There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved : the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue. But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients. Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn. I find it helpful to explicitly declare your intent up front as a sharp, binary variable in your mind. If you are consuming content: are you trying to be entertained or are you trying to learn? And if you are creating content: are you trying to entertain or are you trying to teach? You'll go down a different path in each case. Attempts to seek the stuff in between actually clamp to zero. So for those who actually want to learn. Unless you are trying to learn something narrow and specific, close those tabs with quick blog posts. Close those tabs of "Learn XYZ in 10 minutes". Consider the opportunity cost of snacking and seek the meal - the textbooks, docs, papers, manuals, longform. Allocate a 4 hour window. Don't just read, take notes, re-read, re-phrase, process, manipulate, learn. And for those actually trying to educate, please consider writing/recording longform, designed for someone to get "sweaty", especially in today's era of quantity over quality. Give someone a real workout. This is what I aspire to in my own educational work too. My audience will decrease. The ones that remain might not even like it. But at least we'll learn something.

good sign for the resilience and adaptability of people in the face of technological change: the turing test went whooshing by and everyone mostly went about their lives

A reminder. As with food, we spent most of our history deprived of information and craving it; now we have way too much of it to function and manage its entropy and toxicity.

Kinda crazy when you realize India's budget for Chandrayaan-3 ($75M) is less than the film Interstellar ($165M)😯🚀 #Chandrayaan3 #moonlanding

I would like to share this, from Maidan this evening. Each flag represents a soldier who paid the highest possible price any nation can ask of any individual. It does not feel like a somber war memorial because soldiers are still dying in real time. It is horribly real.

A Communities Guide to Prize and Challenge Competitions can help leaders create sustainable competition programs. Get it at: us-ignite.org/tools/playbook… 🙏Thanks to the experts that helped: @smag11 @DanieldotO @msayre @caraturanosnow @aparaskevas @perrymeredith @Joanna_PHL others

language models just being programmed to try to predict the next word is true, but it’s not the dunk some people think it is. animals, including us, are just programmed to try to survive and reproduce, and yet amazingly complex and beautiful stuff comes from it.

Might need a bit more polish … simonwillison.net/2023/Feb/1…

Hahahaha we created Skynet

Seriously, though. The censorship pressure applied to social media over the last decade pales in comparison to the censorship pressure that will be applied to AI.

I have been hearing the idea from some Republicans that Ukrainian resistance comes at a cost to Americans. Nothing could be more wrong. Ukrainian resistance provides extraordinary security benefits to Americans. 1/

Not everything @elonmusk tweets should be taken at face value #Ukraine

Almost everyone chooses permanent chronic pain over temporary acute pain.

I have translated and added subtitles to the latest video speech by Vladimir Putin from two hours ago. Please don’t let it go in vain - I want everyone to see what a speech of true fascism looks like. No further comment needed, it’s all here, in his speech

The thing about any hardware manufacturing operation is, if you can’t get even a single part, your ability to manufacture your thing comes to a complete halt. You can try to design around the missing part, but that takes time and can be hard to impossible.

Я очень люблю Россию и мне больно на это все смотреть.

Watch Footage from the Psychology Experiment That Shocked the World Milgram’s Obedience Study (1961) openculture.com/2020/02/foot…